Jacob Heilbrunn

The contrast could hardly have been starker. As Donald Trump palled around with Mohammed bin Salman in the newly gilded Oval Office, Congress was voting on a transparency act that would further expose Jeffrey Epstein’s grave misdeeds. Trump, who had worked overtime to try and quash the vote, was in his element with the Saudi crown prince. Transparency? Not a bit of it. Trump proclaimed that the crown prince ‘knew nothing’ about the death of Jamal Khashoggi who was, after all, ‘extremely controversial,’ the term that he often deploys to describe anyone he dislikes or finds nettlesome. The hero, or, to put it more precisely, heroine, of the day was Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is a profile in courage.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump depicted himself as synonymous with winning. “We’re gonna win so much,” he said, “you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say please, please, it’s too much winning we can’t take it anymore.” Lately, however, Trump has been losing – losing not only in the court of public opinion, but also the courts themselves. The latest instance came with the decision of Utah judge Dianna Gibson to reject a congressional map that Republican lawmakers drew to try and ensure that a Democrat cannot win even a single seat in the state. Gibson ruled that the map “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.” Utah Democrats rejoiced.

It’s becoming increasingly taxing for Donald Trump to defend his tariff policy. His latest gambit is to float the prospect of a $2,000 rebate to Americans from the tens of billions that the federal government has collected in tariffs. But will this prove any more successful than his previous attempts to justify his loopy tariffs?With the Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down his tariffs as a form of revenue collection designed to perform an end-run around Congress, Trump is scrambling. As usual, bravado prevails. On Sunday, he declared, “A dividend of at $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president said on Truth Social.” Trump also dismissed his detractors as “FOOLS!

Former vice president Dick Cheney, who died on Monday at age 84, loathed Donald Trump. In a 2022 election campaign ad for his daughter, Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming, he declared: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Yet Cheney was more responsible for Trump’s rise than almost anyone else in the Republican establishment. He helped to mastermind the calamitous Iraq War and preached the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Instead of vilifying Cheney, MAGA-world should offer him a bouquet of appreciation. Recall that it was during the 2016 South Carolina primary that Trump first showed his real independence from the folderol surrounding the Iraq War.

Donald Trump keeps going nuclear. First it was his demand on Thursday that the Pentagon resume nuclear testing. Now he’s declaring that the Senate must abolish the filibuster in toto. In a post on his social media site, Trump announced: “THE CHOICE IS CLEAR – INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER.” Are Republican senators seeking to duck and cover in the face of Trump’s exhortations? Not a chance. Rather, in an unusual turn of events, they are defying him. Senate majority leader John Thune issued a statement on Friday morning indicating that he has not altered his views about amending the filibuster. Meanwhile, Senator John Curtis of Utah posted on X Friday morning that the filibuster “forces us to find common ground.

Here we go again. Now that Russian president Vladimir Putin has resumed his bombardment of Ukraine, President Donald Trump is responding by sanctioning the oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil. So much for the vaunted peace push that Trump has been engaging in since he met with Putin in August in Alaska.  The atmosphere has turned distinctly frostier since they held their pow-wow. Budapest was supposed to be a reprise of the brief thaw that took place in August but Trump has got cold feet after the Kremlin indicated that it was in no mood to compromise over the actual boundaries between it and Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continued his excellent sartorial adventure at the White House, appearing in an elegantly cut black suit and shirt on Friday as he met with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room. But while they may have helped avoid any emanations of wrath from his host, his habiliments did not appear to prompt Trump to approve the dispatch of Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, a coveted item indeed. “We’d much rather not need Tomahawks,” Trump said. “We’d much rather get the war over. It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.”  Back to square one, in other words. In August, Trump had claimed that his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin would lead to a breakthrough. It never happened.

This is Donald Trump’s finest hour. Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him Israel’s “greatest friend” and nominated him for the Israel Prize,” the nation’s “highest award.” Trump himself was greeted rapturously by the parliamentarians for securing a breakthrough peace deal in Gaza. Trump basked in the applause for his months-long diplomatic effort, declaring that “this is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But can one truly emerge? Or is this simply a temporary truce between the warring parties? Trump’s immediate accomplishment was to arrange for the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its attack on October 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered.

Donald Trump is on a roll. He not only wrangled Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into submission, but also the terrorist organization Hamas, which has apparently agreed to release all remaining hostages. The war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 67,000 Palestinians, looks to be coming to an end. On Thursday evening, Trump took a victory lap as Israel and Hamas, who have been negotiating in Egypt, assented to the first phase of his 20-point peace plan. “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan.

In her new memoirs, 107 Days, Kamala Harris recounts that in July 2024 she had an important meeting about Israel and the Gaza Strip. Harris, who was running for the presidency, hoped to show that she could pressure Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas. “Netanyahu’s hooded gaze and disengaged demeanors,” she writes, “made it clear to me that he was running out the clock." His only goal was a temporary ceasefire and to undermine the Biden administration. “He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him,” Harris recalls. “Not Joe, not me. Netanyahu wanted the guy who would acquiesce to his every extreme proposal for the future of Gaza’s inhabitants and add his own plan for a land grab by his developer cronies.

Hamas did not wait long to accede to Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan – or at least accept it with conditions. It didn’t really have a choice. The same can be said for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was forced to accept a deal that he never wanted in the first place. Give credit where it’s due: Trump boxed in both Netanyahu and Hamas. For Trump, the pending agreement is a big accomplishment. It may not win him a Nobel but the aim is noble. With his usual flair for the dramatic, Trump responded to Hamas’ offer to release the remaining hostages by declaring, “I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE.” He stated that “the bombing of Gaza must stop immediately.

The surprising thing is not that the federal government has shut down. It would have been surprising if it did not. Each side thinks it has the cards and that it has put the other in a bad position. The result is that the budget feud could last for months, ending with a temporary armistice that satisfies no one. There is little incentive for either side to shut down the shutdown. Washington Post columnist Paul Kane notes that most Senators have little reason to compromise: “very few senators feel the political pressure that usually comes with calamitous events like a federal agency shutdown. Most sit in safe seats, many with reelection campaigns a distant concern.